Video about my Publishing Costs
Here is where I will let you know what artists I’ve used. I will also let you know of any advertising, where I advertised, and how much it’s costing me. I will give you my honest feedback on the services rendered as it happens.
Getting into Bookstores-
Books and Books Stocking fee– $50
Editorial reviews–
Self-published review– $78.89
Online book club- about $90 and a 4 month turnaround
Total– $168.89
Advertising/Marketing–
Facebook advertising– $57
Twitter ads– (July 1st and 2nd) $18 Twitter ad through TweetYourBooks for a small pre-order push. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive any sales from this advertisement either.
Instagram ads– $5 for about 2 days of ads. Haven’t really noticed any results from it so far.
Amazon Ads– $155.08
Bookbub Ads–
Note- None of the ads resulted in any sales or page reads.
Ad 1- $6.92 August 14th to 16th and 7 clicks.
Ad 2- Live $5.73 August 22-29.
Ad 3- $0.56 September 1-September 2.
Ad 4 (10-05 to 10-11)- $2.63
Ad 5- (Jan 2020)- $0.40
Newsletter Ads and promotions–
$10 Silver Empire-Black Friday Group Promotion
$15 +$15+$15+ $15 Bookfunnel subscription with email plug in
$25 Bargain Booksy for YA (August 29th)
$20 Book Rebel promotion (August 19th)
$20 Book Sends (September 10th)
$10 Hidden Gems Newsletter (October 16th)
$12 Fiver Uncarved newsletter promotion (October 19th)
$12 Bknights promotion on Fiver. You get a post on their website and you are a part of their newsletter for the day. I felt like the post part isn’t worth it since it was buried among other posts.
$7 Dracosama promotion on Fiver. The visibility was better and I got a sale from the promotion. Their posts are arranged by day and genre, so it doesn’t get buried in a sea of posts.
$7 Dracosama again. This time for a free book promotion on October 1st.
Fiver– I paid about $7 to have someone post about my novella on their blog. They put up a description and purchase link.
$9 Buck books (Fiction)
Feedback– Overall, it didn’t seem worth the hype. I moved 2 copies and got 94 page reads and that was about it. Also I got a good featured editorial review that day so not even sure if the traffic was from the promotion.
$10 E-reader IQ
Feedback- No page reads and 1 sale
BMI books– $10 Standard promotion. That means it’s up on the website for 365 days.
$20 E-book Hounds– Under novella and Diamonds in the Ruff
$35 Book barbarian
$28 Fussy Librarian– Under Teen/ YA and urban fantasy
KDP rocket– $97
It has a 30 day money back guarantee and is supposed to help you pick out marketable key words, so I’m going to give it a shot and see if it helps build more organic traffic.
100 perfect people– $10
It’s a 10 day guide to get 100 people in your ideal audience.
Best Seller launch blueprint package– $27
Feedback– It is definitely right in its suggestions for your cover and blurb. The blurb has gotten me a huge handful of sales. It recommends Bknights, but that account has gotten a bit greedy so the visibility isn’t what it used to be. Dracosama is a great alternative for fantasy writers. I’m still waiting to see what happens with Booksends (it recommends this promotion). It also recommends Buckbooks, but I don’t have enough reviews for that yet.
Marketing mentorship– Free through a FB group called women helping women entrepreneurs. They also have a premium membership with additional support for about 9 dollars a month. My mentor was excellent and offered help and support on coming up with a marketing plan and making sure the cover was a good fit for my audience. My mentor was Stephanie Dolce and she was really helpful.
Book doggy free book promo– $18
Total– $788.32
Cover art–
about $360 through Sukesha Ray (Including the print cover it was actually about $500 total)
My opinion on services rendered– She did an amazing job on the cover. If you aren’t happy with the design the first time be honest with her. She’s patient and more than willing to work with you. She’s also been an excellent mentor and has helped me with marketing advice and suggestions for the convention I’m doing in August. I love her art style and the cover turned out eye catching and beautiful.
IMPORTANT– Make sure for any cover art that you get a contract, so you don’t end up in legal trouble later. You need for the artist to give you their copyrights to the artwork or at least have a contract saying you have the right to use the cover art for sales of A,B, and C. This also applies to any editing.
Book cover animation- $15 USD (Recent and waiting for finished product)
Total– $515
Editing
Developmental editing– is $135.73
I’m currently having both of these services done through Charlotte Blowe Stanley (Aka N-D-Scribable services on their Facebook page). She’s done an amazing job on both services so far and has been a pleasure to work with. She’s also really well experienced in her field, she edited for a best selling novel, and she was very professional.
Feedback-Overall, she did an excellent job with developmental editing. She fixed a ton of plot holes and helped me really flesh out my characters and setting.
Substantial editing/proofreading– $12 per 1000 words (Overall cost for my 32k word manuscript was $385.
Feedback– I did this through Annie Morgan who I found through the recommendation of another author, and she did a good job on making the work flow nicer and caught some clarity errors where I’d gone through and changed something developmentally and the sentence or phrasing just didn’t make sense.
Formatting
Formatting– $276.95 for print and e-book formatting, e-book cover formatting, and a beta reading copy.
$50 (Additional charge for a 3 business day rush fee) The normal speed is 5-7 business days.
$20 fixed missed typos
Total– $346.96
This was much more expensive than I’d anticipated. I went through Ebooklaunch, but I also was recommended to words-2-kindle and their quote was also pretty reasonable. Overall, the formatting turned out pretty well.
Miscellaneous
Blurb- $40
1 ISBN– $99 (I got a discount through Amazon).
$80 Got another one for Ingramsparks.
$120 -Audiobook (Having someone I know do the narration)
$18 shipping a giveaway prize (a signed copy of the book) to India
$10 Amazon gift card giveaway prize
Total– $367
In-person Events
Anime con booth– $100 (I’m going to Otakufest on August 31st)
Anime con booth– $90 for Otakufest 2020. I got a discount for signing up early.
Coconut creek Library Event- $15 donation to the library. You also get 6 copies of your book into a local bookstore for the event.
Book copies–
$218 for 75 copies plus shipping.
Note– I ordered on August 13th and as of August 23rd they haven’t even shipped. ETA was 23rd to 27th and Amazon CS was zero help. I’ll let you know if they arrive on time.
Update– They did arrive on time. Yay. Someone from CS was able to contact the warehouse to get them shipped out.
$106 for 35 copies plus shipping
$50 library event prizes
Total– $579
Decorations/ odds and ends for the booth–
Bookmarks–$50.39 (with the cost of design services on Vistaprint)
$61.39 (for 200 bookmarks)
Business cards– 200 free business cards through 4over4.com
$35– 500 more business cards on Vistaprint with updated information.
$10-Re-design for business card.
Internet– $30 for the convention
Parking– $21 for the duration of the convention
Total– $207. 78
ONE TIME COSTS-
Banner- $78.59- Custom pop-up banner for my anime con booth from Vista Print
$20– Banner design
Tablecloth– $13 for a blue ombre table cloth. If you want something nice or custom, order a couple months in advance. I ended up running into this problem because the cloth I wanted wouldn’t arrive until 1 month after the event I wanted it for.
Book stands– $28.03 with shipping. I went through a website called DisplayStands4You
Update– They arrived swiftly and in excellent shape. I will most definitely be using them again.
Total= $139.62
Total so far– $3,673.31
If I find out that there’s anything I’m missing, I will add it here, but this should be a pretty comprehensive list of my costs so far.
adventuringwriter.wordpress.com 